


Peach Cobbler

by Primarina (PastelBrachypelma)



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Adoption, Animals, Fluff, Gen, Gift Fic, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, basically it's dan plus kittens so, foster kittens, what more could you ask for?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 14:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19133548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelBrachypelma/pseuds/Primarina
Summary: For my dear friend starlight--brigade!You are a kitten foster mom who helps Dan adopt some kittens. Yep, that's it, that's the plot.





	Peach Cobbler

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starlight_brigade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_brigade/gifts).



“Two bonded babies up for adoption! Please email if interested!”

I’ve been fostering kittens for about three years now, and I’ve done a fair bit of advocacy work for feral cats in my area, but I’d never tried to bond kittens before. I’d never gone out of my way to try and make two kittens like each other, but I’ve also never had two kittens who seemed magnetically drawn to each other.

Until I met Peach and Pie.

Peach and Pie were from two totally different litters, and two totally different situations. Peach was a rare female ginger tabby with a white belly, white paws, and bright green eyes who very quickly earned the nickname “Peaches and Cream,” the only surviving kitten of her litter after her mother was hit by a car. Her two brothers had died, but she lived, despite being very small and almost ice cold when found. Pie was a calico cat with splotches of brown and black covering her nose and face. She’d been born to an indoor cat that had gone unspayed, neglected by her mother because she was the runt of the litter. Her human caretaker had no idea what to do with her, and, not wanting to give up on her, took her to the vet right away. The vet called the animal shelter…who called me.

I’m kind of the “kitten lady” in my neighborhood.

So Peach and Pie came in amongst the three other kittens I was fostering at the time, who had all come from the same litter. They were three boisterous boys who got along all right (as best as siblings can), but I felt confident in adopting them out alone. Buster, the eldest and the biggest (both in size and weight, I might add), was adopted out shortly before I let Peach and Pie join the other boys, Hamish and Jordan, in the kitten room. (Yes, once you become a kitten foster home, you do indeed make your laundry room into a kitten room. Deal with it.)

Peach and Pie took to each other instantly in a way I’d never seen before in my kittens. Snuggle bug Pie attached herself to the playful and energetic Peach during one naptime, and from then on, I saw how much these two orphaned babies needed each other. 

There was just one problem: finding an adopter for two kittens.

I don’t blame adopters for just wanting one kitten. Kittens are a lot to handle. They need constant attention and training and love, and they have enough energy to run around the earth twice before naptime. For a first-time cat owner, one kitten is more than enough.

I was worried about Peach and Pie. I have three cats of my own and I don’t intend on adopting another anytime soon. (Fostering kittens is enough of a drain on my finances, and social media is only a side gig at best.) I was dreading splitting them up, knowing that they’d perish if they weren’t adopted out together. 

I wasn’t expecting to get an email that very day.

“Hello,

I’m a first-time adopter and I’ve been looking for a bonded pair of kittens for a long time. Peach and Pie are absolutely adorable, and I’d love to meet them, if that’d be at all possible. I’ve been preparing for adoption for about half a year now, so I’m more than ready to take on the kittens. If you’re interested in meeting, please get back to me! Thanks!

-Dan”

The website after the @ in the man’s email took me to some website that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the early 90s. Blinding white text on black background greeted me, though from the homepage that linked me to Ticketmaster, I gathered it was a band or group of some sort. 

I frowned. I’d never received an email from someone who was in a band asking about my kittens. A quick Instagram search told me that it was the lead singer, Dan Avidan, alias Danny Sexbang, who had contacted me. My immediate reaction was anger. I thought it was some kind of sick joke. The two men looked harmless enough, and Dan was, dare I say it, cute, but looks can be deceiving. 

“Sir,

Taking care of a kitten, never mind two kittens, is a huge responsibility. They may look cute, but Peach and Pie are young and energetic. Time would be needed to get the kittens adjusted to your home, and I would not recommend leaving them alone while you go on tour with your band. My first priority is the kittens, and I don’t want any harm to come to them.

Signed,

California Kittens”

…yeah, I know it’s a dumb business name. Shut up.

Satisfied that would be the end of the exchange, or, at least, the end of kitten-related exchanges, from the sender, I said goodnight to the kittens and curled up in bed with my own fur babies, hoping to go back to Instagram in the morning to promote my adoptable babies.

I was driving out to respond to a call about a kitten found hiding under a mobile home out near where the wildfires had occurred (and knowing how dangerous that area still was, my mind was on the kitten’s safety) when I got a new email from Dan the band man.

“Ugh,” I grumbled to myself. “I’ll get to you later.”

The kitten under the mobile home was tiny and black as soot (though, thankfully, not from the smoke), but alive and weaned. With no mother or colony in site, I decided to take her in and call her Crisp, after the crispy surroundings I’d found her in. After making sure she was fed and packed up to go home, I rendezvoused with the local animal shelter, telling them I could take the kitten and telling them to keep me posted if they found any signs of a colony.

During lunch on my drive home, I stopped at a gas station to eat my sandwich and check my emails. I replied to a few brands offering to sponsor me, and then decided to address the email from Dan. The subject line had remained unchanged, so I hoped I would get an apology for trying to play a joke on me, at least. Maybe he’d ask me where to hire animals for a photoshoot. (I got that one more than I’d like to admit. Listen, I know I live in California, but that doesn’t mean I mingle with celebrities, okay? Sheesh.)

Instead, I got an unexpected surprise.

“Hey,

Sorry if it seemed like I was joking! I actually want to meet Peach and Pie! I understand the commitment involved, and I’m ready to take it on. My friend adopted a new kitten a few months ago, so I got to see firsthand how difficult it is. But I still want to go through with it. I care about the kittens’ wellbeing, too. If I’m not the right adopter, I’ll accept that. But I want to try.

Thanks,  
Dan.”

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. 

I sent over my adoption policies for him to read and ask questions about. I asked him about his daily lifestyle (“busy, but I can make time”), his work life (“usually about 9 or 10 hours, but I can work from home sometimes if need be”), and his social life (“I don’t throw wild parties or anything, but I do have friends over occasionally”). We chatted about Peach and Pie and their personalities and individual needs (“a snuggly kitten sounds awesome!”) and how prepared he was to take them in (“my house has been kitten proof for half a year. I’m ready for babies!”).

I was…warming up to him. I asked him if he’d be okay with me sharing certain details relating to Peach and Pie after he adopted them, and if he’d be okay with me filming a two-week update of the kittens in their new home, as I tended to do with a majority of my mostly local adoptions. From his reticence (“okay, but you don’t have to show where I live…right? It’ll just be the cats?”), I gathered he was at least moderately well known. Famous enough to worry about stalkers, anyway. 

I checked out the band’s YouTube channel and stumbled across his personal Instagram. I watched a few episodes of the YouTube let’s play show he was in, and even caught a snippet of a stream on the channel. From what I could tell, he seemed bubbly and hyper, yet with a reserved dignity. He reminded me of my cat, Charlie, in a way. Even down to the hair. (Charlie is a Persian mix, but...well, you get the idea.)

He told me he had some free time after he was finished touring, so we scheduled our first meeting. I was excited, though mostly for the sake of Peach and Pie, who could sense something was up. Crisp, who was adjusting nicely, and Beanie, a neonatal I’d just taken in the other day, were my primary concern up until his arrival. Crisp was still in quarantine with the last dregs of an eye infection and Beanie needed nearly all of my attention every two hours while I gently nursed him with a miracle nipple and warm kitten formula.

I had my hand in the incubator when the doorbell rang. “Coming!” I called automatically, even though I had no idea if he’d heard me. I quickly washed my hands, momentarily abandoning the formula gently warming up in a pot on the stove, and rushed to open the door.

I smiled, but I’m not sure if that hid my shock. First of all, he was taller and lankier than I expected, looking lean in the face despite three-day-old stubble and tired with bags under his eyes. He had a Starbucks cup in one hand marked “tea,” but I couldn’t see or read what else the barista had written on it. He was dressed in a faded Rush tee, torn jeans, and a baggy sweatshirt with a pink, yellow, and blue logo on it that I recognized as another band he was associated with…Starland, or something. Stargrenade? Starhammer? I couldn’t remember.

He smiled back, his voice higher pitched that I expected, and with a hint of a New Jersey accent. “Hey! Sorry I didn’t bring you a Starbucks.” He wriggled the cup gently in his big hand, extending the other to shake. “I’m Dan! Nice to finally meet you!”

Charlie was headbutting the back of my shoe, and I gently nudged him away, extending the hand that wasn’t holding the door open to return the gesture. “You can just call me the “Crazy Kitten Lady.” Everyone else does.”

Dan laughed, and…wow. I didn’t expect the experience of his laugh to be so…uplifting, somehow. I stepped aside to let him in, and he hesitated on my mat. “Do you care if I keep my shoes on, or…?”

“No, you’re probably better with your shoes on,” I said, shrugging. “One of my cats, Poppy, is getting old, so she sometimes takes her litter with her. I switched to sand, but…” I hesitated, realizing I was rambling, but Dan seemed pretty engaged giving Charlie butt pats like an expert. And Charlie was already purring, already getting his oodles of hair all over Dan’s jeans. And yes, Charlie is a mostly white cat as well. “Oh, um, sorry about Charlie. He loves people.”

“It’s okay.” Dan reached up to scratch behind Charlie’s ears, making him purr loudly. “I love a good cat myself.” He’d been kneeling, but straightened himself up with the help of my wall, groaning as his knees cracked. “I’m getting too old for this,” he complained mildly, brushing absently at his jeans to get the cat hair off. (It wasn’t helping.) “When can I meet Peach and Pie?”

“Oh, in a bit,” I said, beckoning him into my open kitchen and offering him a seat at my kitchen island. “I just have to feed Beanie, if that’s okay. He’s a neonate who needs to eat, like, two minutes ago.”

“Sure. I’ll finish my tea, then.”

“Go ahead. And uh, there’s drinks in the fridge, I think. Just don’t drink anything with a cat sticker on it.”

“Gotchya.”

I let the silence hang a bit, humming to myself absently as I grabbed Beanie’s blanket and heating pad and then walking to the incubator, which was sitting in a nook that was supposed to be for a bar. Y’know, if you’re not a kitten rescuer. I wheeled over my office chair so I didn’t have to sit at the bar and grabbed the blanket, heating pad, and bottle. “Hey, Beanie,” I cooed, stroking the white kitten’s little head. I had paper towels at the ready to help him pee afterwards, but right now, I was trying to get the miracle nipple into his mouth. 

I was aware that Dan was watching me, but not that I’d started humming again. 

“Oh, that’s Africa, right?”

“What?” I looked up at him briefly to find him resting his chin in the palm of his hand. “Africa?”

“Yeah, by Toto? Sorry, you were humming it.” He sounded shy, and I smiled to myself, which he couldn’t see because I was monitoring Beanie. “I just know the melody cause I covered it, and…”

“Yeah, I saw that.” I nodded. “I thought it was really good.”

“Oh! Thanks!” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. I giggled.

Silence. 

“How’d you become a kitten rescuer?”

I shrugged. It’s a question I get a lot, but one whose answer never really feels right no matter how many times I say it. “I dunno. I’ve always loved cats, I guess. My parents had them ever since I was little, and when I moved to California a few years ago to pursue a YouTube career that wasn’t really working out, I stumbled into a few courses on feral cat populations and courses by vets on how to care for neonates, and then I found Charlie, cold and wet after a heavy rain outside in my bushes and the rest is history.”

“Wow. That’s really cool!”

I laughed. “Nah, not really…I mean, I’ve helped a lot of kittens, but I’m still learning.” I switched to helping Beanie pee, aware Dan was giving me an odd look. “I’ve had to call for help in a panic multiple times because I was out of my depth with a baby like Beanie here, and well…you know, they don’t make it, and then I cry and wonder if I’m cut out for this and…”

I meet Dan’s dark eyes, and he looks troubled. Which isn’t the look I usually get when I’m helping a kitten pee.

“I think what you’re doing is awesome,” he said warmly, his voice suddenly low and melodic, oddly serious. “You’re helping so many kittens get help and find homes, and that’s not something everyone can do. And…you can’t save them all.” He sighed heavily. “I know what that’s like. We…on the stream my friend Arin and I do, our first or second one, we had somebody donate who…” He ran a hand through his curly hair. “Well…it was pretty clear they were gonna kill themselves. And y’know, it’s like, your head knows what to say, right? But your heart…it gets messed up. And you never know if what you said got through to them or not.” He started picking at the paper cut with his thumb. “I didn’t mean to, uh, bring the mood down…”

“No, I…I get it,” I said, bundling Beanie up as he snuggled into the heating pad. “You can’t save everyone. Or every cat. But you save somebody.”

“Or some pussy.”

That startled a laugh out of me. “No. That’s not…don’t say that again. Ever.”

He smiled. “Agreed. That’s not a word that means “cat” anymore.”

I don’t know why, but that smile felt like the most genuine one I’d seen from him since he’d arrived.

Once I’d put Beanie away, I took him to the kitten room and introduced him to Peach and Pie. I showed him where the toys and treats were and stood by holding Hamish and Jordan as he sat on the floor playing catch-the-feather with Peach while Pie climbed up his shirt. I watched him laughing as Peach flopped over onto her back in clumsy pursuit of the feather toy. I watched him nuzzling Pie as she purred into his shoulder. I watched him lie down on his back and let the two kittens bat at his wild curly hair and lick his face. I watched him gently break up a rare scuffle between them. I watched him plop them on his lap and stroke them gently with two fingers until they fell asleep. Next to him, they looked so small and fragile, but of all the people I’d let into my kitten room, I felt like these tiny kittens were safe with him. And I could tell they felt safe, too.

I sat across from him, letting Hamish nibble on my fingers while Jordan claimed the feather toy. Dan began to pull on the wand gently, one of his big hands steadying Peach and Pie as they napped against his stomach.

“So, what did you think of Peach and Pie?”

“More adorable in person.” Dan laughed softly as Jordan made a face while trying to snap at the feather. “I love how calm Pie is, and Peach is just so clumsy and so charming. She reminds me of Arin.”

“Your friend?” I asked, remembering the shouty co-host of that Grumpy Games show he did. 

“Yeah.” Dan nodded. “She’s named after Princess Peach, and he loves Princess Peach.”

I seemed to recall that from a couple of older Mario episodes I’d seen them play. “She’s not, actually. I used to call her “Peaches and Cream.” But that just became “Peach” for short.”

“Aww,” Dan cooed, scratching Peach’s nose. “She does look like she got soaked in cream.”

“She’s rare, too. Most ginger cats are male.”

Dan nodded sagely. “One in a million. I like that.” Then, he beamed, looking at me with slightly manic eyes. “Wait. Together, they’re Peach Cobbler!”

That got me laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

~

The day Peach and Pie were going to go home had come at last. I offered to drive out to Dan’s house, which was in a quiet and secluded neighborhood near Glendale, to drop off the babies. Just like with every send-off, I cried, but seeing the way he snuggled up with them on his big couch immediately let me know I was making the right decision. Signed papers in hand, (“hey, you could probably sell those. Make a million.”), I promised to be back for a two-week check in; mandatory for all new adopters.

I’d started following Dan’s Instagram in anticipation of kitten content, and I was not disappointed. For a week, Dan’s Instagram stories were nothing but Peach and Pie. From adorable pictures (one had Peach sprawled out on top of a flowery pink kimono with the caption “Cat hair don’t care” written in neon script at the bottom), to videos (one with Pie snoring on Dan’s bare chest, which ended with Dan smiling sleepily and “kissing” the viewer goodnight), Dan’s Instagram had become about the cats. I was amused when reading the comments, seeing things like: “aww Dan’s a good cat dad!”. I was surprised when, a few days before the two-week check-in, I was tagged in a picture.

Peach and Pie were sitting on a tan couch in a sparsely lit room, their heads touching. (Peach was slightly towering over Pie, whose ears looked to be a bit Scottish fold from the way they were developing). The caption read: “Thanks @californiakittens for helping us get home! Daddy can’t wait to show you how far we’ve come!”

I liked the photo immediately. It was too cute to pass up.

~

Finally, it was time to see Peach and Pie. I packed up my camera and a portable lamp just in case and headed to Dan’s house. The man in question greeted me in an NSP tee shirt, ripped jeans, and Pie held aloft against his chest. He embraced me, which I shyly returned, and happily invited me inside.

“I’m planning on getting my living room catified,” he told me excitedly as I found and began to pet Peach, who was lazily flopped down on the back of the sofa. Dan’s laptop was half open on the far cushion, and I assumed he’d been working before I came over. “I’ve been watching Jackson Galaxy and getting ideas for when the girls are older.”

For a first-time cat owner, he was doing well. The kittens had scratching posts and toys galore, sparkly blue food dishes, an automatic cat fountain with fresh water, and, yes, the all-important kitten proofing.

I set up my camera to take some footage of Peach and Pie for my channel. They seemed in love with their owner, and even shy, snuggly Pie seemed to want to play and eagerly engaged with Dan when he offered her a crinkly hot dog. Both cats seemed to find Dan’s hair an interesting plaything, as I saw when Peach jumped onto his shoulder and started attempting to eat it.

“I’ve taken them to the Grump Space a few times,” he said, then, “the place where I work. Our interns and producer absolutely love them. As they should.” He lifted Peach up and gently hugged her to his chest. Pie meowed and pawed at his arm, making Dan pick her up for snuggles, too.

“What about Arin?” I asked. 

“Oh, yeah. He has three cats at home, so he and his wife are ecstatic that I’ve been converted to cat person.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Have you, now?”

Dan grinned sheepishly. “Yeah…you got any more that might work with these two?”

I laughed. “I’ll keep you posted.” 

“Noted. I already follow you on Instagram.”

I frowned. “What? Since when?”

Dan shrugged. “For a while. Why, you haven’t noticed the increase in followers?”

“I…” I looked at my phone and sure enough…I now had 1k followers. “H-how…?”

“My audience, probably. I think they all flocked to your page after I tagged you.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “T-thank you.”

Dan smiled warmly. “No problem.”

We talked for a while after that, and I found out he was absolutely serious about adopting a third kitten. I told him I’d be on the lookout for some that might fit, and he sent me off with some tea in a merch mug that he promised I could keep (“please, I have, like, 500 of them”). From the doorway, he waved, with both kittens in his arms, and I had to smile.

A celebrity turned out to be my favorite adoption story yet. Who knew?

**Author's Note:**

> For starlight--brigade who is mourning the death of her beloved kitty. I thought a fic like this might help, but idk. I wrote this in like, two hours, so...is it good? You decide!
> 
> It should be incredibly obvious that I've been watching The Kitten Lady on YouTube. Yep. You're welcome.


End file.
